Microsoft Adds Live Tile Support For SkyDrive Windows App

With Box.net, Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud already securing a huge chunk of the consumer cloud storage market place, Microsoft's SkyDrive sometimes feels like the guy in the back of the room. Of course, adding multi-platform capabilities to it could help it better rival things like Drive and Dropbox, but the company's clearly aiming to make it a flagship product for its own software first. Back in October, Microsoft released SkyDrive for Windows and Windows RT, and starting this week, the SkyDrive app from the Windows Store will start showing you notifications on the live tile when you add new files to your SkyDrive.

Now the tile for the SkyDrive app will be useful for more than just launching the app, by providing at-a-glance info on what’s going on in your SkyDrive. Whenever you add new files to SkyDrive, the app tile shows you relevant details. If you add a document, you’ll see the document name, along with when it was added, and what folder it’s in. If you add photos, the tile gives you a nice view of those photos. It's certainly a nice feature, and Live Tiles in general are one of the standout items that help differentiate Windows RT and Windows 8 from the crowd. Will more companies write their apps to support live notifications? One can hope.